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Research | Atmosphere | O3M SAF Project
Satellite Application Facility on Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring (O3M SAF)
The Finnish Meteorological Institute coordinates the EUMETSAT Satellite Application Facility on Ozone and Atmospheric Chemistry Monitoring (O3M SAF). This facility generates, validates, archives and distributes atmospheric data products of ozone, trace gases, aerosols and surface ultraviolet radiation using the measurements of the Meteorological Operational (MetOp) satellites. EUMETSAT is European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.
The depletion of the atmosphere's protective ozone layer, which is particularly noticeable over the Arctic and Antarctic regions, is of particular environmental concern. The resulting increased levels of ultraviolet radiation are having harmful effects on agriculture, forests, water ecosystems, materials and people.
MetOp is a polar orbiting satellite, flying at an altitude of about 837 km, and therefore observing smaller areas in considerably finer detail than the geostationary satellites. The MetOp series consists of a total of three satellites, which are designed to provide meteorological operational data from polar orbit until 2020. All MetOp satellites have been developed by a joint EUMETSAT and European Space Agency (ESA) team. The first satellite, MetOp-A, was successfully launched on 19 October 2006.
Within the O3M SAF project, the measurements of the Global Ozone Monitoring Experiment-2 (GOME-2) spectrometer, onboard MetOp, will be used in monitoring ozone and other atmospheric constituents that are related to the depletion of ozone in the stratosphere and its production in the troposphere, as well as to natural and anthropogenic sources of pollution. In addition, the amount of surface ultraviolet radiation is derived from the measurements.
Interesting questions to be answered by MetOp are:
- will the ozone hole begin to decrease because an international treaty, the Montreal protocol, has banned the production of the ozone destroying chemicals, or
- will the global warming increase the ozone depletion by cooling the stratosphere.
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